Things about Brits I will never understand

[Hazir]

I enjoy watching programs in which people build or drastically renovate houses. Since I seem to share that with a lot of Brits that almost inevitably leads to me seeing a lot of Brit programming. Over the years I have NEVER understood 2 things.

The first would be the bath tub fetishism; no matter how small the bathroom they need to fit in a bathtub. Even if that means they have to cram in a halfsize one that I personally wouldn't fit in no matter how much I tried. In 3/4 of the cases I would simply put in a shower(cabin). What's with the addiction to tubs you won't use most of the time.

Then the second is the fetishism with the number of bedrooms. Why is a house with 3 bedrooms that hardly can fit one single bed better than a house with 2 bedrooms that are big enough for normal use?

[RandBlade]

Bathtubs are great, who doesn't enjoy having a bath? Especially women - my wife loves having a bath. Our rented home when we moved in together before we bought this house had just a shower and getting a bath was high on the priority list for looking for a home to buy on a budget.

Three bedrooms are the minimum for a family, or potentially growing family. One for the parents, one for boys, one for girls. Since boys and girls don't generally share (especially if teenage), you are severely limiting your potential market if its only got two rooms. Boys can share with each other, ditto for girls, so four plus rooms isn't necessary but three is. Even if you don't have both boys and girls, reselling your home after you want to move out has a limited market if you only have two rooms. A bunk-bed can have two children in the space of one single bed, or even if its a small room for one kid you can get a lot in the space of a single bedroom. Amanda and I are thinking when we move Chloe on from the nursery we might get her something like this:


Land is expensive so houses have a tendency to be expensive here, making the most of the space is key.

[Steely Glint]

An Englishman's home is his bathtub.

[Aimless]

I must confess I've grown increasingly less fond of baths and prefer showers, esp luxurious rainforest-style ones. Two bedroom apartments are fairly common here. People can move if/when they need to. Saves money in the meantime both when it comes to buying as well as when it comes to rent/fees. If we'd found a a good two bedroom apartment when we were looking then that's what we would have gone for. It woulda cost half as much per month. But people were holding on tight to their apartments at the time

[RandBlade]

I'd love to get a rainforest style one!

[Wraith]

What's a rainforest style shower?

[RandBlade]

If its the same as what I'm thinking of, its a large, wide, square shower head with high pressure (if done right). It's like stepping under a torrential shower, like in a rainforest. I've only ever really seen it in modern hotel rooms, we had one in our hotel room in Turkey for our honeymoon (the hotel had only opened that year). Feedback I've read about online though is its hard to retrofit it at home without something to increase water pressure (as its a much greater volume of water used in the head the pressure will drop otherwise).

[Ominous Gamer]

What's a rainforest style shower?

The ones with comically large shower heads that point straight down, look like the center of a sunflower.


I prefer dual shower heads. More freedom on direction and pressure.

[earthJoker]

I don't like rainforest showers, it get's the shampoo in my eyes They seem to get very popular in hotels though
A proper shower head on a hose with adjustable height is perfect.

What I really hate is the Australian showers



What is that supposed to be? A desktop lamp?

Back to the bathtubs, I have to agree with Hazir. Don't see the point in them.

[Timbuk2]

Brits also have an obsession with house price.

The value of a 3-bed house is greater than that of a 2-bed, even if the overall area of the house is the same. Brits are always loathe to reduce the number of bedrooms, and will often seek ways to increase.

A number of people in my close are building into the attic, to create a fourth bedroom. Cost of building into the attic is £30k - £40k, but by doing so and adding the fourth bedroom will yield double that at least in house value - with London prices anyway. We're considering doing the same with ours, even though we don't have kids and are not ever going to, so we won't actually be using all bedrooms. We will however move house at some point, so the investment is worthwhile.

~

Baths, as Rand said; who doesn't love em.

During the week I'll generally shower, being more quick and convenient.

On a weekend I'll often have a long leisurely bath, when I'm sweaty and tired from whatever I've been doing that day - put on the tunes, stick in the scented stuff, lie back and soak up the suds. One of my favourite ways to switch off and relax.

[Flixy]

I like baths, but what he described as tiny ones being crammed into a too small bathroom seems stupid, better off with a shower then.

[Timbuk2]

Yeh need to stretch out in the bath. If the bathroom were too small to fit in a full-length one i'd be looking to knock through walls and redesign the layout to fit it.

[GGT]

Hazir, if you don't understand Brits wanting bathtubs or small bedrooms....you probably have NO idea why the US real estate market is so skewed.